Apropos of the Wet Snow
by Finnimbrun
Summary: A story of coping for various characters, set in the wake of the epic battle in Konoha. Alternate timeline. Disregards chapter 429 and onwards. Naruto-centric. Sakura, Kakashi, Pein. Ensemble-fic.


**Title:** Apropos of the Wet Snow  
**Rating:** PG-ish (K+)  
**Genre:** General/Drama  
**Characters:** Naruto, Sakura, Kakashi, Sai, Pein, Kurenai, Shikamaru, mentions of various others, strong references to Sasuke, Obito, Minato, Itachi, Jiraiya, et al (no pairings, really, unless you count implicit Pein/Konan)  
**Spoilers:** For the recent manga chapters, though at this point, the whole story _could be_ alternate timeline-ish [as in, assumes Naruto to have come back in time to, uh, prevent any entire catastrophe].  
**Disclaimer:** Naruto is the property of Kishimoto Masashi. Standard fanfic disclaimers apply. See notes at the bottom of the 'fic.

**Summary:** Sixteen days: That's what you have. Sixteen winter days of sunlight and snow during which you must make peace with life, death, and yourself. There are many who should have died in the invasion. One is Naruto. Now it's time to cope. Ghosts of the pasts and pieces of the future. Assumes the invasion of Konoha went somewhat differently, with Naruto getting home sooner and chapter 429 **not having happened**.

**Note:** This fic is kind of speculative/alternate timeline. Konoha didn't get nuked. All/most Named Characters are alive, including Kakashi and Tsunade. Naruto was late, but not quite that late. Konoha was apocalyptic, but not quite that apocalyptic. I wrote all this before chapter 429, so I pretty much got rickrolled. [We're totally not going to go into how Naruto _won_, because that's not actually the point. I leave that to Kishi. The point is, uh. Well.]

[extra note: FFN dicked up my formatting, predictably enough. the proper version can be found on my LiveJournal, in the "Homepage" link on my profile. I have tried to enact damage control and fix everything as best as possible, but if some random thing looks off, this is probably why.]

* * *

Apropos of the Wet Snow

a tale of sixteen days

Things have changed since the end of the world.

Myobokuzan slides into the past, a great green land of mountains and giant mushrooms and purple skies, now weakening to grey in memory. Kakashi-sensei rests in the hospital. Sakura cuts apples for him, as she did for Sasuke years ago, and hums. One day when the light looks like noon, Naruto shuffles in the doorway and toes the frame until she invites him in, finger to her lips – bandaged from where the knife slipped; momentary unsteadiness of hands.

"Sleeping," she says, and lifts the plate, apple slice proffered on the tip of a knife.

"Guess my timing's bad."

Sakura's eyes lower. "Not in the end."

She looks up again quickly afterwards, but the sense of heaviness and hanging does not abate – not even after Kakashi has awoken and creased his mask with the curve of a smile, not even when Naruto looks up and notices that Sai has ghosted into the room and holds up a hand like a cloud of almost human mist with one shape and one not quite solid presence.

Naruto smiles, brighter than everyone else, but his smile – their smiles – are elaborate puzzles with one missing piece each.

**~X~**

No one blames Naruto for being tardy, or if they do, they don't say so.

It's the third day after, and his hands are shoved deep in his pockets as he walks through the wasteland that was named Konoha (but it'll be rebuilt; it's been rebuilt before); many are dead, many are still alive, and the sun is beating him down so that the sweat trickles over the marks on his cheeks.

_You're a hero now._ This is what he is told, and this is what their eyes say.

You're a hero now. Like him. Like your father. My, how you've grown. How much you've done for us. And now: Saved us all, again.

Iruka squeezes his shoulder, then draws him into an embrace as he passes; just about hugs the life out of him. His grin is almost painful, underscored by large tears which shine in his eyes and don't fall. Naruto remembers the first time he saw his sensei cry. Now he's tall enough to stand and gaze into his eyes, at level, and things look different from up here.

Tsunade is in her office: dealing with insurgencies, dealing with Root, dealing out punishments.

Shikamaru sits on the steps of the porch of a ruined house. He looks older than Naruto thinks he remembers him looking, with his eyes focused on the wide length of paper he holds in one hand. A glass of something (sake? wine? scotch?) occupies his other hand, rather than a cigarette. He's still too young. They're still too young. But no one will mind, and maybe they're not.

"She's due in two weeks," he says without preamble.

First baby born after the end of the world.

Naruto takes the glass when it is offered; red wine, he sees, now that he has the chance for a closer inspection. _I never knew you drank_, Naruto does not say, and swallows; scowls. Shikamaru Nara, surprise genius that he proved to be, reviews the schematics for a new Konoha, while Naruto looks on from over his shoulder, licking the bitter spill from his lips.

"Finish it. I shouldn't drink any more."

Naruto nods.

Hands are being put to use, bodies congregating; mumbling, voices through the air, and Naruto stands up, wipes the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. Makes the signs, because it is time to rebuild, and he can create more hands than anyone.

**~X~**

Window open, the moonlight cuts a swath of glow over his face, like a flicker on the knife.

Naruto keeps thinking of that blade, and Sakura's hands (smaller than his) and the smell of apples, and her shampoo. Arms under his head, he shifts; kicks his feet together and stares at the bend of his knees. The day was hot and stuffy, but the night is comfortable, cool, and empty. His body still wears the glorious ache of hard work, from the joints in his fingers to the muscles in his calves – everything popping and throbbing and sore.

He is thinking of going to the refrigerator and getting something to drink, because he can't sleep. He is thinking of a floating sea of faces, unanimous congratulations, cheers, and hugs. He is thinking of the wine, and how it was hard for him to drink.

Sasuke will come, soon.

The knock on the door shakes his bones.

_Sasuke is home._

**~X~**

"I can understand," Ibiki says, "if you want to decline."

Naruto sits at the table, scraping his fingernails down the wood.

"He said he would talk to me?"

With a distraught sigh that says he's been trying for hours, Inoichi informs them that he can't read his mind. Too many seals. Can't seem to get past the seals. Even now. Even now that he's locked in a prison, rotting powerless behind bars.

And he might be lying: a point both men emphasize.

The clock _tick-tocks_ its way through his head, and Naruto can feel his palm indenting his cheek from where he is now slouched against it, elbow to the table. This is his thinking pose, and he knows they're looking at his scrunched up face.

"You don't owe anyone anything." This is Inoichi. "You've already -"

Saved the village. And you need to rest, and recover. You need to. You should. It must have hurt your body and soul, what you went through with the kyuubi, and its chakra. And we're sorry. You're a hero, and we all love you, now. And their mouths are saying it - or no, their eyes are, and he shouldn't know, because he's never been good at reading these meanings at all.

But -

"I'll do it," he says, and snaps to life. Smiles, and when his mouth does this, the familiar energy swells, like the fox is leaking out, like everything before the end of the world. "Don't worry. I'll protect Konoha, all right? I'll do it. It's nothing!"

Five fingers on the top of a chair, Inoichi leans forward.

"Tomorrow, then."

The clock ticks louder, or the room becomes quiet; Naruto thinks he blinks, after a blur of light and sound. The door is shutting. And then he hears the voices of men drifting through the wood, under and around; Ibiki, silhouetted by the crescent of the moon, standing by Inoichi on the porch. Starlight catches in their eyes; four points stand white against the backdrop of darkness and shine through the window.

The sky is grey and full of snow.

_Sasuke is home._

**~X~**

It is the fourth day.

This is not right.

"You should be dead," Naruto says -

- but actually, this is wrong, too.

He doesn't say the words. He thinks them. They don't come within a mile of his mouth.

The chair's legs screech across the floor as he drags it back and sits down, crosses his legs and moves his jaw back and forth – opposite of his gaze, which doesn't move at all. His teeth screech across one another, too, but this sound is only in his head.

_Hey_ is wrong and _what the hell is this about_ is too blunt for this, for this person, and _thanks for almost killing me, asshole_ is right, but it's not coming out.

So:

He walks away.

He has to come up with what he wants to say. That's what he tells them.

But, really, he doesn't know why.

**~X~**

"I'm fine! It's nothing! Jeez," he tells people, starting with Konohamaru. "What the hell are you worrying for? C'mon."

And he laughs. Assures them he's been through worse, because he has been through worse. He just got half the bones in his body broken, didn't he? He'd have been dead, if not for the kyuubi chakra; he was lying there, with little bone fragments threatening to poke his heart, puncture it and choke him with blood. He could've, would've been a goner. What the hell is a conversation, next to _that_?

Naruto dreams of his comparisons: lying broken in the water, broken on the ground. Dreams of rain that streams down his face, the sharp pain that brings bright red bubbles of blood and spittle to mouth, lips lacy with foam. Someone is walking away, and he can almost hear them, almost see them, as he lays dying.

There are black fingernails on the long, long fingers that reach into him to take away every kind of fire he has.

When he wakes up, he finds a letter from Sakura taped to the door of his apartment:

_Hey, Naruto._

_I heard about what happened. Are you all right? You can come talk to me anytime. You know that. I'll be at the hospital, helping out there. You need your rest, and you'd better take care of yourself! You've been through a lot, and contrary to what you sometimes seem to think, you're _not _invincible! I'll be checking in on you soon, so expect me to drop by!_

_Love,_

_Sakura_

It is the fifth day. There is no snow.

**~X~**

Sasuke is not home. This is not Sasuke. And looking at him, Naruto feels a cool vein of anger throbbing somewhere inside. Anger. Hurt. All his crashed expectations, when he sees orange-red hair instead of black – when he stares across the bars at Ibiki, who removes the blindfold. Then, clear white-silver stares back where there should be tomoe-stained red. White-silver, and vacant. Dead. It's the only thing their eyes have in common: that cold, cold disdain. That nothingness.

"Congratulations on defeating me," he says, with that limp voice. "You were the first."

"I'd do it again, too, you bastard."

Sasuke would have scoffed at that. He would have snapped off some retort. Pein does not scoff, and he does not retort.

It's not the same. It's not a back and forth. There's no life in it. _Your eyes are like his_, Naruto thinks, absurdly, but he corrects himself; Sasuke's not like this at all. Not enough to draw any resemblances, and that's fine by him.

Naruto does not approach the cell; he stays back, keeps his distance, but not out of fear. It's just that -

It's just that this guy isn't _right._

It's just that this guy's eyes don't feel anything.

"You left, last time. Why?"

And Naruto almost opens his mouth to say something without thinking (something like, _why do you care_ or _hey, you said you'd talk if I - _), but Ibiki's hand clamps down on the prisoner's shoulder – shoves him forward, then jerks him back, and he leans in close, like he intends to whisper in his ear. At a level tone, he says, "We ask the questions, in this place. Not you." A sneer twitches on his scarred face. "You're no god, here. Never here."

Naruto laughs a little, under his breath. "Don't worry. I was just trying to think of what I wanted to ask, is all," he answers Pein, regardless. "And I know now."

The prisoner is like this: stripped of his cloak, wearing only the belted black tunic, pants, and shoes. The loss of the fabric makes him look smaller; he's not a big man, actually. About as broad as Naruto, maybe taller. His scratched hitai-ate is gone, long removed and done away with, so his hair . . . his hair, looking at it, is about the same as Naruto's hair, when his own hitai-ate is taken off, at least in terms of style. The colour is different, but. But anyway.

The bitch – the real _bitch_ - is that this man shouldn't be around at all. He should be dead. He is a corpse. That's just the truth of the matter. He's a corpse with eyes that Naruto doesn't like, and he likes talking to him even less. And this guy, this _asshole_, is directly responsible for killing Ero-sennin and bringing ruin to the village. He would've destroyed it all, would've let loose fire on the world, and would've killed Naruto . . . and everyone else, everyone else, and had things gone differently in even the slightest extent, then. Then.

No.

The chakra receivers have been taken from Pein's arms, which now dangle uselessly by his sides, unable to move or utilize jutsu. Naruto doesn't like the sight of them, either.

If Ibiki removes the piercings from the mouth and ears, then Pein will lose sight and hearing. His _original_ body, which remains outside of Konoha's possession, will be plunged into complete sensory deprivation – Inoichi's phrasing. Sensory deprivation: sightless, painless, without hearing or smell or taste or any feeling at all. Blind and waiting for death in some dark place.

Like being buried alive, Naruto thinks, and suddenly he feels his skin crawl.

"Where's Sasuke?"

It nearly surprises him, when it finally comes out. Nearly. But not quite.

Pein closes his eyes.

"I'll tell you."

Naruto finds himself staring, against his will, at the holes in Pein's forearms. Six of them; three for each arm. The skin around them is angry inflamed red, infection-licked and raw, but worse is the way you can look straight through and see the wall on the other side. The bone has been punched clean through, though at either end of each hole, it pokes its way into sight, like small off-white knobs.

_I still don't get what kind of person you are._

He drags his upper teeth over his lower lip.

"In eleven days," Pein begins, "I am to be executed. If you do something for me before then, I'll tell you anything you want to know."

**~X~**

_SAKURA-CHAN!_

_Don't worry about me! It was only a few broken bones! Maybe more than a few ... I've been closer to dying before! It's nothing! I'm going to be Hokage one day, remember? Well, drop by any time you want._

_- Naruto._

_PS._

_Bring __food__ [ramen]._

**~X~**

From as far back as he can remember, Naruto has always hated riddles. Jutsu, he likes, and open conflict, sure, and if there's an idiot who needs a good talking to or a thump to the head, well, he can take that on. He can especially handle the thump to the head part. If someone wants to take a swing at him, he'll take a swing at them. Maybe a few swings. That's how it goes. And that'd be why Sasuke and he were - _are_, he amends – best friends.

Why they will be best friends again, someday, even if Sasuke is a riddle, himself.

Right at this moment, Sasuke is _literally_ a riddle: someone else's riddle. Some stranger's riddle. That's what pisses Naruto off the most, because _riddles_ make him feel so damned helpless, but nothing is worse than being dependent on a mystery for the answer to a mystery.

The truth is, Naruto almost begged.

The other truth is, if he were still a few years younger, and if this were a time before the end of the world, he _would_ have begged.

Pein did not budge, either physically or in intent.

"What? What is it?" Naruto had demanded – all while knowing how ridiculous it was that _he_ should have to demand _anything_, given their respective positions. "Tell me! What do I have to do?"

The prisoner (why should he get a name?) hadn't answered; had refused to answer, in fact. He only stared – at Naruto or beyond him or at nothing, maybe.

"You can't give me what I want right now. You can't do it if I tell you to. It won't be authentic," was all Pein would venture to say, and,

"You will give it to me, eventually. I know you will. I'm not concerned."

Which amounted to: figure it out on your own.

Which wasn't fair.

Naruto hated riddles. And the _hell_ was he going to let this jerk bribe him!

Pein turned around – turned away – and took his seat on the bench in his cell. Leaned against the wall: leaned, that is. He didn't slouch.

He left Naruto to feel the sum measure of all his wasted time.

**~X~**

_I'll get Sasuke back in my own way._

It is the sixth day, and this is Naruto's first thought upon waking.

_I shouldn't've thought that guy would be any help, anyway. Akatsuki -_

Well, he's alive. That's what matters. Gaara is alive. And it sounds like Hachibi's host (what is his name?) is alive – yeah, because Tsunade (Old Hag Tsunade!) has just gotten word of this. And Sasuke's tangled up in that, but nowhere to be found. Hunted, though.

But what Naruto knows, and what he thinks Sakura knows, too, is that Sasuke is coming home; it's like this. It's in his blood, and maybe he sounds crazy if he says it, but it's like with animals that can feel the coming of an earthquake.

He eats ramen for breakfast; the steam is still rising off it, and he stirs the noodles with a wooden spoon – thinks about his training, slurps and licks his lips and fingers.

He looks outside, once, and catches sight of snow flurries.

It's here.

And when he finishes the plain ramen (from a cup; home-made, sort of), he goes out, and spends the remainder of the day helping to reconstruct the village.

**~X~**

Sasuke stands in the snow, bright-eyed and ear-muffed. Sakura is with him, wearing a yellow ribbon in her hair, and the sun is . . . _ceaseless_, like the sunshine could swallow everything down, forever.

Naruto finds himself looking on, unsure of where he is looking on from, and he feels it.

_It_ swells up in his chest and throbs; a second heart, you might say. The tidal wave surges through him, at the sight of them, at the melting snows, at the orange and red leaves that overtake the scene, and suddenly, it's the worst thing ever, and the best.

Because he's looking at his friend's wild black hair and the way his face is all scrunched up and pug-nosed (this is a different Sasuke, isn't it? Not the Sasuke he knows later), and he sees the gleam of loneliness in his eyes.

You're alone, too. You're alone, too.

You're alone, too, and someone hurt you, didn't they?

The clarity of it, the purity, strikes him, but it is the purity of a teenager – maybe an adult, now – the understanding of an adult, and in this scene from another world, he can't be more than five, processing things like a five-year-old, all fuzzy and vague: Sasuke doesn't like anyone. Sasuke isn't happy. Everyone likes Sasuke. I wish everyone liked me.

I wish.

Back when -

But then the years are passing. Sasuke's face is changing, growing lean and hollow. The pug nose lengthens to something aquiline; and as all the pieces are cut from Sasuke – carved, you could say – Naruto feels himself carved, too; his emotions are carved apart, so he feels things differently from the blurred half-recalled sensations of childhood: scenes sway and multiply, plumpen with understanding.

You were alone. And you were hurting.

And I.

And I could have saved you.

Itachi killed every member of the Uchiha clan, except one. He left one alive.

Maybe the last part is untrue.

Naruto lies on the ground, looking up, up, up, into the dull, crow-black desolation of Sasuke's eyes, and he understands who else died.

**~X~**

Naruto wakes from the nightmare and says, around a mouth full of ghosts and ravens, "I'll be alive enough for both of us."

Though, actually, he thinks he is still dreaming.

**~X~**

The door to the chamber is on the room's left side; the cell is on its right, behind a series of bars. It's about the size of an average bedroom - this cell - and sparsely furnished.

It contains a table littered with newspapers in which the subject concerns the activity of the inmate himself (for all his disinterest) and magazines spilling open gloss and glamour; silver screen ingenues with hair like Ino's, advertisements for new styles of kunai, full colour shine on a cluttered surface in a square grey room.

Two piercings have been returned to their slots, one for each arm. Reward for the prisoner's good behaviour.

Pein holds one forearm up, twisting it in arthritic semi-circles; long, slow motions like a lever with four absent screws. Two fingers are curled inwards, two standing and bent slightly at the joints, and his thumb trembles, faintly.

It reminds Naruto of when Old Hag Tsunade re-wired Kabuto's body, when he had to understand it in a new light and re-figure the nerves.

The prison is clean and humane, but in it, everything is a machine, and so is Naruto's mouth. It just droops, wants to hang open on rusted hinges.

It is the seventh day.

Naruto looks on, at the blankness that drinks him down until he's under the water, deep in the ocean, in shadows and distorted sound, and the quietness . . .

Pein looks over his shoulder – suddenly, sharply.

Around the six black bumps, the skin furrows. At the lips, the snakebites become anchors, tugging the face from _impassive_ to _severe_.

Crinkles appear beneath the unfocused eyes.

This is familiar.

Naruto knows that face, that petulance, what it means to be looked at but looked _through_; dismissed with a cool, contemptuous gaze, while he's staring on and those eyes ask, _why are you here?_

And accuse: _you don't belong here. I'm the king of this space. I'm the king of every space I touch. You're just a child. Go away. Grow up._

Grow up.

"I - " Naruto says, and almost, stupidly, apologizes. Almost, _I'm sorry._

Instead, his head drops. At least three years' worth of regret and rage hits him, inexplicably, like a comet to the chest, like a full-on fucking _rasengan_ to pulverize the second heart he's been growing – that's been hemorrhaging three years' worth of blood through his system, filling him with all this extra – and before he knows what he's doing, his hands are strangling the bars.

He kicks one so hard that the _clang_ resonates through the room, reverberates off the other poles like a xylophone dirge.

He hears people calling his name, somewhere, concerned, but they're all the way up on the shore, and he's sixty feet under water.

"How?"

Breathes out, shakily.

"_How_ - " Whiteness blooms around his knuckles, red on his palms and over the flesh of forefinger and thumb. "-can you not care?"

The silence looks back at him, and he bows his head, rests it against iron.

"Your friend is dead," he rasps in a broken voice, "Your friend. She's dead. You know she's dead. You haven't said anything! You haven't . . . you haven't done _anything_. How can you not care? _How_! Tell me! Tell me how you can walk away from your friends, from the people who care about you!"

He wilts.

This is drowning, when he sucks in and sucks in, deep breaths through his nose, tears stinging his eyes but stubbornly not falling; his eyes are still too stuck to let them go, like even his body can't accept it, and he's just caught in this place that he doesn't like, where there's no going back and yet he can't quite move forward; this limbo, this hell, is this supposed to be _coping_?

"I wish someone would tell me, 'cause I don't understand how anyone could leave their friends behind," he whispers. "I can't."

Once he's picked the pieces of himself off the floor, the throb has passed.

Florescent bulbs glare down on the room's inhabitants, flickering.

It's funny how tears can go right back down, like they were never there.

"I shouldn't have come," he tells someone (someone who is reaching at him, worried, asking him if he's all right, he thinks). "No, it's okay. I just... I shouldn't have come."

Naruto never means to look up, but when he does, the face he never means to see is turned to him still; still regarding. Statue unmoving, shadowed, but smooth now.

Ringed eyes glimmer.

When Naruto turns to leave, he hears, behind him (in a voice speaking to itself):

"You remind me of someone."

He doesn't say:

You remind me of someone, too.

**~X~**

Naruto wakes on the eighth day to find that his foot screams with silent pain, and this is when he realizes he kicked those bars harder than he'd thought.

_Screams_ is a way of putting it; it complains enough that he wonders if he knocked a fracture into the damned thing, but wouldn't he have noticed that?

Regardless, the foot is swollen near the middle, so he tapes white strips over gauze and ties them around it, until it's looking like a present meant to be unwrapped.

Once the foot is tucked away in a boot and a partial attempt is made at cleaning the bedroom, Naruto leaves to see Sakura and Kakashi-sensei.

He wonders, fleetingly, when _Sakura-chan_ has become simply _Sakura_.

This is the day their sensei is released from the hospital. The ground is covered in a thin layer of fine white snow, and flakes are still swirling down.

The three of them meet together, like old times, at Ichiraku's.

Sakura drags in Sai, who for once is wearing an _entire_ shirt – and a coat, too – and she herself has on this big dark green thing (Naruto will be damned if he can put much identity to clothes) with fluff around the neck, but what Naruto _really_ notices is the strength it gives to her eyes.

There's a _kick_ to the way she takes her seat – an emphasis. Like, she _takes_ it, and looks at her friends, and smiles comfortably: a soft, daydreamy smile, as she hums and reads an order off the menu.

Not the same "Sakura-chan" who cut apple slices for "Sasuke-kun" in another time and place.

Today, they tease Kakashi because he's _not_ late.

(But he's already eaten, he says; how typical.)

Naruto orders a full steaming bowl of miso ramen, grips it with both hands, and tips it as soon as it's barely cooled, so he has a mouthful of hot fish slice and egg, with broth already dripping into his stomach, when he notices -

He doesn't know what he notices.

There's Sakura, and Sai, and Kakashi-sensei. Same as always: Sai prodding noodles with chopsticks, Sakura speaking of the activities of her past few days with this kind of merry exhaustion; Sai is like one cord of wire and rope, bleached in places, silent with thoughts only he understands, and Sakura is different; _alive_, maybe, is accurate. Alive and just. _Lit up_. She always had the best chakra control. Now it's like she has her own aura, her own glow. Or . . . it's just the lamps reflecting off the snow and into her eyes. She smells nice. She always smells nice.

Here is what else Naruto notices: Kakashi is looking at him.

And it's not that same bored, sly, sideways kind of a look; it's not mischief or disengaged Icha Icha reading.

But then he smiles, easy and painless. "Well, let's see how long I can stay out of the hospital this time, shall we?"

Naruto splutters and nearly chokes on his noodles.

**~X~**

Ichiraku's survived the end of the world. Many things did, actually.

The snow falls continuously, into the night, and by the ninth day, it covers every surface. Come noon, it's not a clean white snow anymore. It's slushy and wet, white in the tree branches like Ero-sennin's hair and sleet grey on the sidewalks like Kakashi's.

Naruto looks down, bleary-eyed; his nose runs from a cold brought on by the weather, and his cheek is smushed against the cool glass, making a foggy print.

Sakura told this story about a woman with a piece of shrapnel lodged under a rib, and how she'd taken it out and isolated the problem; she'd – with her own two hands – pumped chakra in, re-wired the body to respond, adjusted the flow to accommodate the injury. Her bloody hands, holding pieces from people, knowing them in this way, saving them, and their words, she says – their smiles – are the greatest encouragement.

Sakura would make a great Hokage.

The thought surprises him.

Sakura would make a great Hokage.

Below his bedroom window, Naruto sees Konohamaru and his friends building a snowman. They wave an invitation up to him.

Sakura would make a great Hokage.

Against the window, his lip curves up.

He should be training, he thinks, or on a mission, but on the ninth day, Naruto builds snowmen, nurses his cold with hot cocoa, and lets the world dream itself away beneath the ice.

**~X~**

The tenth day is the opposite of the ninth.

The cold is worse. Naruto sniffles and unlatches the window, yanks it up so the slide of glass and wood _groans_ at him and frozen air blasts him straight on - chills the slippery snot that's trying to leak out (before he wipes it away with his forearm) and his wet, runny, red-streaked eyes.

Sasuke should have been here by now, by all reports.

Sasuke is not coming.

Maybe Naruto has known that for a while now, too.

It's not a good day, but it's not a bad one, either. His foot has healed completely, but he's sick and that heaviness is back in his lungs, making him ball his fists and bite his lips and wish for _one good release_ - one good, long sob. It's not coming. The past ten days have felt apart from time; ten days in some other universe where events and motions move through molasses and get stuck, caught in clocks that never tell the right hour – too many ticks fast or slow, and you're a day ahead or a day behind, but when you look up, the hands are _never right_. And it's when you realize that you aren't sure _when_ everyone else is, when you are -

But you know you're not really moving at all.

Today, though, it's all right, because Naruto has somehow gotten what he needs to go back to that cell. The truth is there, as well as the lie he's been hiding from.

The lie is: Naruto won.

"Why didn't you kill me?" he asks, quietly, when he returns to visit the person he cannot leave: the question he cannot seem to bury under ramen, snowfall, or a thousand cheers and smiles and hugs.

Twice he should have died. Twice he was spared. The second time, he has as few answers as the first.

Now, for better or worse, he's ready to confront the truth. The last three times, he wasn't, and he handled the situation badly. Presently, he stands with his hands on his hips, and his words clear his head and ground him in reality even as they leave his mouth. This is right.

"Is it . . . "

Pein is sitting on the bench again, with an arm resting against his knee, and he gives this unimpressed look that might be described as _long suffering_ (impressively long suffering, to be so blank), but predictably, what he _doesn't_ give is any indication that he intends to acknowledge anyone with a response.

" . . . because I remind you of someone?" Naruto stumbles on, anyway.

"I can't make you understand what you won't see for yourself." He doesn't even blink. Just turns to look at the wall. "What your village has done."

"Well, you're right about that. I _don't_ understand. But even if I did, I wouldn't understand why you're so. So - ?"

Calm?

"Yeah, well, why aren't you resisting? That's what I wanna know."

Because this guy . . . _this guy_ . . . sure, he looks dead and empty sometimes; sits or stands in repose and barely talks, but this guy led Akatsuki, and this guy was ready to bring the _fucking apocalypse_ down on the world in full-out fire and brimstone rain of terror. He _did_ bring the mini-apocalypse to Konoha, fought with such violence that the whole village was terrorized; buildings leveled, people killed, a full hospital: pummeled Kakashi-sensei, threatened the Hokage.

And beat the hell out of Naruto.

They beat the hell out of each other, specifically.

"What do you think - " Pein's voice remains dead as a rag, but deep like it could be rich if the right words and mood ever found him. " - of a village, of countries, and people who train children to kill? And what do you think of graduating from an academy at five or six, knowing all these ways and manners of killing?"

He looks over. "Like Uchiha Itachi, who massacred. Because he was told to. Maybe you think sealing demons in babies is appropriate."

"Of course I don't! I'm a victim of that, too!"

"Then keep thinking that way."

"But that's not all there is to Konoha, or the world."

"For you."

He takes a step forward, peers in, but Pein has already looked away again.

This is the last body. The others were destroyed in the battle.

The ground around the conflict was reduced, akin to a crater, and when the participants were pulled forth from the smouldering debris, both were caked in their own blood, and each other's. Naruto remembers the crunch of his bones, still in his body – remembers, also, the sight of dirt and gore plastering his opponent's hair to his forehead, and the look of shock in those alien eyes.

Remembers the odd, dark feeling of satisfaction as he surveyed his work – silvery piercings slicked with glistening red – and thought: _Served you right. Served you right, for taking him from me._

It was brief but frightening.

Such thoughts don't seem as if they could exist in this real, actual universe.

But the thing is, he knows it wasn't _all_ the kyuubi talking to him.

"I hate riddles," he says, then:

"Look, I don't know what you want. Whatever it is, I can't give it to you."

He slaps his palms together.

Okay, so it's not perfect, but it's better than the last three times. Better than just walking out, or losing his temper, even though he's tempted. Denial, bargaining, anger; what is this, then?

"Maybe I could, but I don't _know_ what you want! Why don't you just tell me?"

Doesn't have the foggiest idea, actually.

But maybe the price is too high. It's worth a shot, but maybe the price is just too damned high. Isn't this what he's known all along? Isn't this why he's not pursued this harder? Isn't this why he keeps putting this off? And now he's running out of time.

Six days. It's not going to happen.

"You'll figure it out," Pein says, sounding unconcerned.

And Naruto frowns, and thinks, _What? Is that what those eyes tell you, or something? Because I sure as hell don't know what you're on about._

"Yeah? Why aren't you fighting? You just sit there! I don't get it. Before . . . "

The response comes in a tone that allows no argument.

"I lost."

_I'm sorry, Sasuke,_ Naruto thinks. _I'm sorry. I can't. I'll bring you back my way._

"Twenty-two years ago . . . "

Pein's rickety fingers comb through his hair; his head is lowered, so all the sharp shadows wash over his expressionless face. Two bright eyes – the shadows seem unable to mask those.

" . . . in a civil war in Amegakure, when the war was dragging on, the warring factions began hiring shinobi from prominent villages in the hopes of resolving the conflict quickly. Konoha shinobi were among those hired. This increased the level of violence. When the war dragged on, both sides lost morale. One day, a group of foreign shinobi who had run out of food and supplies decided to lay waste to a local village to get these things. This village was small. It still farmed with water buffalo."

He doesn't continue, but Naruto thinks he knows how the story ends.

"You asked me why I didn't kill you."

The hand stills.

In the same monotone as ever, he says,

"I wonder: Why didn't _you_ kill _me_?"

**~X~**

On the eleventh day, Naruto is summoned to the Hokage's office, and he's only surprised that this didn't happen sooner.

She looks meaningfully at a chair near her desk until, finally, he guiltily shuffles over and sits down. He's still twitching with energy and excitement.

"Three things," Tsunade says – raising three fingers, as she once raised one to thrash him with it. "One: I apologize, but you can't leave the village right now. We're recovering from a crisis, in a state of disrepair and emergency, and all of our important shinobi are needed here to protect the village for as long as it's this vulnerable."

"Yeah," Naruto answers. "I understand."

"So no looking for Uchiha Sasuke." She sighs. "I'm sorry."

She stands up, looks out the window, then turns and faces the door – slams her palm onto the desk as if it's done something to offend her. Coffee sloshes from the mug, spills a few droplets onto the wood, and Naruto has this suspicion that she's already had more than a few cups.

"Two: Uchiha Sasuke is preoccupied right now. There's a -" The sides of her mouth pinch with the effort of suppressing a frown. " - a _situation_ with the Raikage of Kumogakure."

Naruto has already heard a little about this. Maybe, in a way, he's not been wanting to hear it, and so he's not heard more than a baseline account.

"I'm dealing with this from a distance as best as I can at the same time as I'm writing up plans for how to rebuild this village, and at the same time as I'm . . . handling other, more internal . . . situations."

Long fingernails taptaptap polished oak.

"Uchiha Sasuke is a citizen of Konoha, Naruto, and I know what he means to you, but I'm afraid his predicament is on hold right now. I have to ask you and everyone else to stay out of this and let me handle it, for now. It's a matter of diplomacy, not shinobi business – documents and carrier pigeons and envoys, not kunai. Do you understand?"

Naruto nods, and he thinks he must have on his best "kicked puppy" look, because his hands are clenched in his lap and Tsunade's eyebrows raise way up, as if to ask: _What? No lip from you?_

"Well, then."

She turns to the side, and her long hair swishes like two horses' tails behind her. Naruto thinks he knows from whom Sakura learned to throw her weight around.

"Third matter of business: Naruto – Jiraiya's will . . . "

Her laugh and smile seem so unutterably _bruised_.

"You're in it."

_I bet I know who else is,_ he thinks, a little wryly.

"And listen." Hand to fist, fist to hip. "I know who you've been visiting."

When Tsunade approaches his chair, she crouches down, and for a moment, Naruto thinks she's going to take one of his hands into her own. But she does no such thing; she only looks at them. Marveling, maybe, at the strength he's developed, or maybe her thoughts are on another plane.

The distance between them is friendly, but careful. This is how it is between them. She isn't his mother. She isn't his grandmother. She won't act like either.

And he knows – they know – it'd be weird if she did.

"I understand. What you're going through, and what you've gone through. I understand. And if you want to talk to me about it . . . "

She fidgets. Frowns. "Well."

"Four," he says.

"Wha -?"

"That's _four_ things." He grins. "You old hag."

So the next thing he knows, she's got his head shoved down, fingers digging into his hair, and the yell he hears goes something like,

"_Don't think that you're too big for me to kick your ass, you little brat!"_

**~X~**

Ero-sennin was a wandering hermit, and as such, he didn't have a permanent residence.

What he did have, Naruto finds, is stuff. Lots and lots of stuff.

It's early on the twelfth day when the gatekeeper accompanies Naruto to the storage shed and unlocks it, leaving Naruto to boggle over a mountain of boxes and dusty crates overflowing with paraphernalia and pages of tattered, yellowed writings, some on lined paper and some on white, with the rare handful that never found paper and had to settle for parchment instead.

Here are a lifetime of rough drafts and stories that were just never good enough.

Here, more importantly, are memories.

Among the strangers which greet Naruto's gaze as he sifts through the belongings are: a broken antique lamp with a gilded body and a heavy blood red shade, a pouch of scratched shuriken that look as if the wind and the elements have nipped at them (they look, Naruto thinks, a bit like giant metal snowflakes), a katana carved with the kanji 變 (decorative item, Naruto suspects), a canoe oar, shakers filled with grains of spices ranging in colour from burnt orange to perfect white to a suspicious kind of lilac, a set of timpani drums from the western lands (probably . . . if he remembers right), no less than eight miniature frog statue idols, and countless books of dubious content.

Well. Not all _that_ dubious. Dirty, dirty, _filthy_ content, more like.

Naruto has most of the "stuff" relocated to his apartment and is thinking about the fact that his cold is mostly gone when he hears a knock on the door and opens it to find Kakashi-sensei with one hand raised – frozen temporarily in a wave that becomes more of a salute on the way down.

"Hello," he says.

Naruto blinks and steps aside, but his former teacher seems reluctant to leave the doorway.

He steals a look over Naruto's shoulder at the mountain of clutter which is sprouting up within the back of the room and says, in an unusually serious but even tone, "If you don't mind, there's something I'd like to show you."

**~X~**

There are bluebirds at the grave.

Bluebirds and robins, too; bouncing around leaving prints in the snow – of which a fresh sheet fell the night before – oblivious and happy.

Kakashi, masked like always, has his face upturned, watching the blue-grey sky. "It's been snowing a lot lately," he muses. "Funny. Winter here is usually so mild."

Naruto agrees; he's all bundled for this winter: orange sweater, orange mittens, orange coat. And he's pretty much totally over the cold now; only a sniffle or two remains.

By and large, they stand in silence.

Silence is still a strange fit for Naruto, but it's gotten easier since the end of the world. There are moments when silence feels almost too easy, and he wonders at those. He used to hate the silence so much. So much.

But he and his old sensei have never had as much to say to one another. Kakashi talked with Sasuke; Naruto understood this, from the start. There were days in which he would've killed for it to be different, but this was the way he understood the world to work. People liked Sasuke. People talked to Sasuke. People saw something in Sasuke.

And what hurt the most – what made it the hardest, Naruto guesses – is that he saw something in Sasuke, too.

"Every time I almost die," Kakashi begins, "I remember. I always _almost_ die."

He kicks at the snow. "They've been building new graves – many of them, for those who died recently. Someone has to bury the dead."

"You've been different, recently," he continues.

"Uh-huh. Training with frogs'll do that to you."

"You know that's not what I mean."

Kakashi is staring at him, sidelong again, with that lackadaisical look he always manages regardless of his concealed face. "Coming back and finding that everyone calls you a hero – now, I remember that. It's something, when perceptions shift so that men who were once hated are now regarded as the most virtuous of shinobi. The world changes. We old people have to change with it, or get left behind."

Naruto is sitting on a small hill, puffed up with moist earth, twigs, and snow. The words cause him to wiggle; his face feels like it must _look_ red and wind-burnt, because the air isn't being too amicable today.

"When you return from a battle in a war, you'll find that people you cared about are missing. What you have to get used to is that a part of you will be missing, too."

Naruto hugs his knees. "Is a part of you buried in that grave, then, Kakashi-sensei?"

"It is. I grew other parts, to compensate. That's what you have to learn to do."

He does not say what happens to you if you do not, but thinking upon the people he's known in life, Naruto supposes he has some idea.

The quietness is not so uneasy anymore. It's puzzling. Perhaps the last twelve days – though abnormal – haven't been entirely bad. It's just . . . puzzling.

The two of them watch Obito's grave, where the tombstone is sheathed in white, and years of things unsaid soak through them – a wound not _healed_, but _healing_.

For now, that's enough.

**~X~**

The moon is full that night.

Konoha snow-covered beneath a moon like this is a brightly-lit dream. The wind shakes the branches and dislodges clumps of ice that crash to the ground.

Naruto still hasn't gone through all of Ero-sennin's possessions. Barely started, in fact.

He isn't sure why. It just seems daunting.

(Daunting, though? After what _he's_ done? What the hell?)

Okay, so. No. That's not all there is to it. That's kind of a lie.

It's more that he's thinking about the memories. All those memories.

He'll tackle them, soon.

The Hokage monument seems to glow.

Years ago, he painted that mountain as a prank, because he wanted attention more than anything. He's shed blood for this village, now.

One face in particular makes him gulp, to see – to feel everything which he must live up to.

_Being a hero is a credit,_ Kakashi-sensei said, _but it's also a kind of burden. People expect things of you. Everyone in Konoha sees you, now. And most of them will expect things from you for the rest of your life._

Naruto wonders if Itachi ever played with Sasuke in weather like this. A pale moon and a pale land; pale as ghosts with creeping feet and lifeless eyes and unkempt black hair.

He looks at the monument, remembers the grave, and Sasuke, and wonders:

What do you do with all your ghosts?

**~X~**

The thirteenth day is the day when everything comes together, but it does not start this way.

It starts like the last twelve days; timeless or time-stilted, with the seconds forgetting themselves and growing into minutes, then hours are lost in pursuits unknown, and Naruto has begun making his way through the writings of the grandfather he adopted.

He's been squinting at the same page for about an hour when he hears a knock on the door.

_The hell? Again?_

"Naruto!"

It's Ino, of all people.

"Yeah? What's up?"

"Get out here, _now_! Kurenai's gone into labour!"

He swallows hard. For an instant, his body seizes itself.

An instant later, he's out the door.

**~X~**

Birth isn't pretty. It's downright _ugly_, in Naruto's opinion, but he doesn't say all this. Not that he sees the birth, of course. He just hears about it, and hears in plenty enough detail, and hears people talking frantically and yelling and screaming while he sits in the hospital, in the lobby, eating candy bars with chocolate and nuts.

Most of their friends are there. Sakura and Ino talk, arguing half the time, and half the time, Naruto can't tell when they're being serious and when they're not. Naruto's main companion is Chouji, who downs more candy bars than he does, and who gets red-faced and puffy and sweats and seems more nervous about _this_ than Naruto remembers seeing him with regards to a battle. But he's pretty nervous himself.

So they discuss this and that; essentially meaningless things to pass the time.

Sakura opens the door with her hands behind her back and this wide, dopey grin on her face.

One by one, they're ushered into the room.

"It's a girl," are the first words they hear. "It's a girl. Come in."

And there she is, hair dark and wet with perspiration, spread all over the pillows, eyes tired but filled with this rare, soft look.

Steel is valued in shinobi. You don't see a look like this very often. But it's this completely open expression; her eyes are letting the world in, and through them, Kurenai is letting all of herself out, and at first, Naruto can only stare.

Shikamaru has been at Kurenai's bedside throughout the labour. He's the first to hold the child, besides her mother.

Born somewhat preemptively, ahead of schedule, but she's healthy, and Naruto looks down at her, and her little moist face with the tightly shut eyes and the tiny, shaky fists, fingers curling and uncurling reflexively, and she – this baby – emits this cranky, grumbly noise that isn't anything like normal sobbing: no tears, just raucous unformed dialogue in a steady stream.

The room is sterile and smells of medicinal supplies. Kurenai looks thinner and lighter already; it's taken a toll on her body, these hours, but the contentment in her eyes says it's worth it. In the space that follows, there's a moment of peace and pausing: no quarrels, no disagreements.

Konoha gathers to witness the first baby born after the end of the world, and the first of a new generation.

In the daze, Naruto eventually finds her passed to him; this warm bundle in a fuzzy out-of-the-dryer blue blanket. Kurenai's baby has a head of fine, downy brown-black hair which will surely thicken as she grows older.

Her almond brown eyes crack open a peep, gaze bleary and unfocused.

Naruto never thought he'd be trusted with something so fragile.

It's about then when it hits him. He's holding her, still in that trance of awe that the scene calls for, when he looks up, and looks at the faces one by one, and he knows, _knows_ what Shikamaru meant, before – knows what his father felt the day he was born.

It was in the midst of that terrible conflict that nearly tore Konoha to shreds, loss and suffering abundant, losing those he loved, but Minato found hope and something to protect, and Naruto is seeing all his friends and _seeing_ them, and thirteen days of words and experiences slide into place, and he knows, he knows: this is what I have. You. All of you.

He's always known. It's just that now, it hits him like a sledgehammer.

It hits him like it must have hit his own father, and like it must hit Kakashi sometimes when he thinks about his genin team.

Naruto understands, finally, what to do with his ghosts.

He also understands why the silence no longer bothers him.

Once upon a time, he needed noise to validate his existence, even if the noise was yelling or berating him.

That time has gone.

**~X~**

Late on the thirteenth day and into the fourteenth day, the snow is melting; it's all around in slushy, goopy piles that are now more grey-silver than white, deeply broken by tracks and footprints, and the air has that smell of cool water to it. It is now that Naruto attacks Ero-sennin's legacy with full force; so for hours he sits and reads, dedicating himself to the words as he has dedicated himself to training with jutsu.

Because of the weather, he loses light on three occasions – once for a couple of hours in the dead of night – and when this happens, he pulls out a flashlight, reads what he can by its light, and pieces together the rest.

The twilight before dawn has crept into the sky and Naruto is reading by lamplight when he finds it.

Beneath a pile of papers in an indistinct box: there's no marker, no indicator of what he's stumbled upon, no big red sign to say, "Here I am! Look at me!"

But maybe he's had the sense that there was something like this, amid all the lost years.

Some things are meant to be found.

**~X~**

What catches his eye first is this:

A drawing.

It's not a fancy drawing; no one's definition would deem it "art".

It's crude. It's not so different from how he'd draw, Naruto has to admit. The hand that made the sketch was obviously that of a child.

There are seven figures portrayed.

The tallest two are the parents. Four are smaller. Children. Children with black hair.

It's hard to say, because the style is so basic – sticks for arms and scribbles for hair and shabby colouring out of the lines with jags and loops – but the smallest child looks to be holding a baby.

The line at the top:

* * *

_My family._

* * *

The second drawing, on a sheet of paper beneath the first, shows one child, alone.

It says:

* * *

_Now_.

* * *

_I keep thinking how they could come back. [scratched out]  
_

_I'm scared._

_I was talking to Jiraiya-sensei. He said to think [paper torn]_

* * *

In heavier, black ink that has dripped onto the page and stained it:

_Yahiko keeps telling me not to cry. I think he's right, because I cry too much._

_We went for a walk today, while Jiraiya-sensei was fixing food. __I__ Konan was making up a song. I keep thinking maybe – [ink spill]_

_I wish I could be like him. He's brave, and he doesn't cry. I haven't told them I was keeping this journal. I don't want them reading it, just in case. But I keep crossing out things, anyway, because I think, what if they find it?_

_I think I love her.__ [heavily scratched]_

_(I wish I could tell her.)_

_I'm so scared._

* * *

_I wonder about ghosts. We were out today, walking, and Yahiko poked this woodpile, and all these snakes slithered out, and I thought some of them might be my brothers and sisters. Jiraiya-sensei doesn't understand it, but my mother told me that snakes are spirits of the dead, finishing business on earth._

_I was __laying__ on the rolled out blanket on the floor of our house__, and__ Konan was holding my hand. We were pretending to be asleep._

_The wind was loud. I heard the door hitting the wood, knocking around. I heard a whistling sound. I __thought it must be my baby sister coming to visit me._

_I remember she had blue eyes._

* * *

_Jiraiya-sensei says you can't tell love for sure a lot of the time, but I love her._

_He says we look like we could be brother and sister. She's from my village. We met when the soldiers had us walking to move us, but they forgot about us. The adults said they'd come back with food, but there were bright lights, and they didn't come back._

_Konan . . . we were in the place they'd put us in to hide. The adults told us not to make a sound, or we'd get killed. It was small, like a box, so we couldn't stand up. It was wet and raining on us. I kept crying. They told me to shut up._

_Shut up. You stupid kid. You'll get us all killed. Shut up. Be a boy. We'll stab you, if you don't shut up. You're another mouth to feed, and we don't need you anyway. You want to end up like your brothers and sisters?_

_I hated myself, but I couldn't stop crying. I just kept thinking of Mommy and Daddy and my baby sister, and First Sister and First Brother and Second Brother._

_I was alone._

_I got quiet because Konan talked to me and told me it would be okay. She wiped my face with her sleeve and gave me a hug and I eventually hugged her back, and we hugged each other all night, and we watched the lights. The noises made us jump._

_The adults didn't come back._

* * *

_She made me a paper flower._

_It's a water lily. Jiraiya-sensei told us about the stories they have in other lands. There are beings called angels, and they have big white wings, and they watch over children like us, who have no one else to watch over them. I was talking to Konan. She told me she would be an angel, for me._

_I kissed h-_

_We kissed._

_She was pulling my hair out from in front of my eyes and smiling and she looked kind of nervous. I felt kind of nervous. I had this thought. I wanted to kiss her, like __Mommy and Daddy__ Father and Mother kissed._

_I just thought it seemed like the right thing to do, but we didn't know how to kiss. I leaned over. She put her hands on the back of my head and we rubbed our lips together. Her skin is soft. She smells nice._

_I dunno if we kissed well, but I liked how it all felt when she kept kissing my forehead, and I kissed hers back. I kept my cheek against her forehead. It felt nice. It was cool._

_Yahiko knows. He just kind of laughed at us._

_He's our friend. He saved us. I keep __fearing__ - thinking -_

_Please don't take them from me._

_Please._

* * *

_I killed a man._

_I feel so bad._

* * *

_Jiraiya-sensei told me he couldn't say if it was right or not, but I did it to protect Yahiko. My friends saved me from being lonely, and I'd do anything for them._

_I still have nightmares sometimes. I dream about my family being alive, and I wake up crying, or I dream about a world where everyone is dead, and I wake up crying._

_I still hate how much I cry. I don't want to cry anymore. I have to be an adult._

_I watch my friends, and I love them, and I keep thinking how bad it'd feel if I lost them. I don't know what I'd do. I can't stand losing anyone else._

_Please . . ._

_Please, don't take them from me._

_I'll do anything. I will!_

_I got on my knees today and closed my eyes and put my hands together, and I thought about who to talk to. I'm not sure._

_I don't really know._

* * *

_I just want to keep them safe._

* * *

_There's something in me. I think. It scares me._

_I'm so scared. I don't want to be alone._

_Konan, Yahiko, please don't let me -_

* * *

_don't leave me..._

* * *

It is the fifteenth day.

Naruto has finished a lifetime of someone else's memories and ghosts; two journals' worth, accompanied by drawings and pictures – pictures depicting his sensei in a different time, in a different country with a different set of pupils: two smiling, one with orange hair and one with blue, and one unsmiling, with black hair, sunken in on himself.

There are patches of snow on the ground. For the first time in days, the clouds are few; fluffy, cotton-like blobs rather than oppressive, dismal grey so weighty as to become one with the sky. Naruto walks down the streets at a brisk pace, waving to the passersby.

Kurenai named her child Nozomi. It's a traditional, old Konoha name from an older era, and it means _hope_ . . . which she is.

Under one arm, Naruto holds the journals. He's careful not to drop them.

From the looks of things, the rebuilding is going well. It will still be a while before Konoha is fixed to the point that it was before all the carnage began, but looking around now, there's no doubt left in Naruto's mind that the will of fire still burns.

And his own will of fire burns, as it carries him back to the prison, back to the cell which has now ceased to be ominous, icy, or insurmountable. Back to the man who came to take it all away.

Because two were pulled from the ruins, and both of them should have died – you could say – but neither did.

And they have had fifteen days to make peace with the fact of being alive, and everything that living means.

"I know what you want," he says, breathlessly.

He holds up the papers, even though he's not talking about the papers, and he knows Pein knows he's not talking about the papers.

Pein is standing up this time, looking on intently.

It's building. That thing. It's been fifteen days, and fifteen days of emotion and three years of emotion and a lifetime, no, two lifetimes, of emotion, of gains and losses.

Naruto squeezes the journals hard, harder than he means to, so loose papers slip out and fall.

"I know who you are. I know you." He laughs, shakily; runs his fingers through his hair, and stumbles forward, heedless. "I know you - "

He bursts into tears.

Fingers wrap around the bars. Naruto hears the thud of the journals as they drop. He falls to his knees, and shudders with sobs; great, bubbling, shameless sobs that crash through him.

And he makes no effort to hold them back.

**~X~**

"I used to cry," Pein says. "Then I decided I shouldn't."

The voice falters.

"Now, I can't. Not even for - "

He does not continue. There is no need.

Naruto feels the brush of a hand on his cheek and looks up to see wetness shining on Pein's fingertips. The black polish has faded off. He rubs two together, so the tears slip between them, then, with the same awkwardness as before, lifts them to his mouth, to taste the salt of all that has been lost to him.

**~X~**

"Sasuke - " he starts, after a moment.

"No," Naruto says. And through his tears, he grins, because how good does it to feel _to feel_?

There are, evidently, prisons worse than those enforced by iron or steel, and once locked inside of them, you can never leave.

"No. Don't bother. I'll find him. I know I will." He knuckles his eyes. "My way."

He realizes, as he says this, that he's known for a while now that he did not need any information about Sasuke that Akatsuki could give him.

What he's needed has been something else.

**~X~**

By the sixteenth day, the snow has melted.

Sakura comes over, and Naruto lets her in, and they hang up holiday lamps together. Afterwards, they relax on the sofa, with her lying on her side and Naruto flopping all over the pillows in mock-exhaustion. She blinks and chuckles and he says, "It's been a weird . . . two weeks? Sixteen days, maybe?"

In reply, Sakura yawns widely, stretches her arms, then picks at a pillow covering with her fingernails. "Yeah." She grins. "It has been. Want to get into the sake?"

"_Sakura-chan!"_ he teases.

But she gives a sly look and reveals that she's brought a bottle over.

"Well." Naruto eyes it, cautiously. "I guess if we survived the end of the world, uh - "

"A little alcohol won't hurt?"

"Yeah," he mumbles. "Maybe."

"Let's do a toast to being alive, then."

"To _living_," Naruto corrects, and clinks their glasses together. "And a toast to all our friends . . . "

He lowers his eyes, for a moment.

" . . . and to our friends who aren't here anymore."

Her eyes narrow in that pretty, affectionate way. She nods, and they drink.

A little later, they're a little drunk, and the lights are a little foggy and the windows have this nice, frosted look, and everything seems to be in tones of warm silver and pale yellow. Sakura falls asleep on the sofa, and Naruto takes her to the bedroom and tucks her in. She sleeps like someone who hasn't slept for ten years, and Naruto looks at her face and knows he's not the only person for whom the last sixteen days have been a lifetime.

He has taken the journals he found back to his apartment. They sit amid the piles of useful things and junk - reminders of someone else's life, memorializing it; he looks at them, and wonders, _did it even mean anything to you that he kept them? Did you even feel anything when you learned that he hadn't forgotten you?_

A paper flower, spread open but pressed flat, amid the pages of a book (made, it looked like, from something clear and plastic) – this is the one thing he does leave in the cell, because he could tell from the look in Pein's eyes that he wanted him to.

He was holding it when Naruto left.

**~X~**

_Sasuke,_

Don't think I don't still remember.

I found something out. Do you know what?

Everyone is kind of human.

And so are you. I've figured you out. Next time we see each other . . .

I'm waiting, Sasuke.

- you know who.

**~X~**

He puts the pencil down and looks at the note (which is, honestly, to himself).

Remembers Nagato, who wrote so passionately about the love of his friends, and remembers thinking, before, that he'd reminded him of someone. Now, he reminds him of someone else. _But._ He taps the paper with the lead point. _You're not who I thought you were, and I'm not who you became, and you're not who I'll be._

Two letters of difference in their names.

**~X~**

By the end of the sixteenth day, the cell is empty of any inhabitant.

On one piece of paper within, in harsh, torturous letters that read like knife scratches:

**~X~**

PEACE

in 16 days

* * *

-fin

* * *

**notes:** + title comes from _Notes from Underground_ by Fyodor Dostoevsky  
+ the stories about snakes and serpents being seen as manifestations of spirits - actually, I heard about this in a Korean story called _The Rainy Spell_ by Yoon Heung-gil and I thought it was neat

this fic effort was made hilarious by the fact that, while writing it, I realized I have no idea how to write Naruto, Kakashi, or basically anyone else!

requiem for a Pein, if you will. because i keep thinking if he ever realizes he's not god, he would realize how wrongly he's lived his life. sooo.

and yes ... i spelled it Pein the whole way through, because i suck. so sue me. gah, where the hell can I even cross-post this thing? :B the stupid formatting won't even transfer on FFN. /woe. XD

I had a definite Point . . . a Thesis, if you will, in mind when I wrote this. Something lame and artsy and pretentious, obviously. And I'm not sure if The Point even transferred. I kept nearly bluntly stating it in the narrative, but then I remembered that'd probably be craptacular of me because, uh, better to show than tell, ya? So I like some of this story. Some of it didn't come out as I'd hoped or planned. But it is what it is. And I'm just glad to have written at least _one_ complete fic over my vacation.

Happy Holidays.


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